BRUSSELS — Ukraine ought to get an “irreversible” offer of eventual membership in NATO during next week’s summit in Washington, Kyiv’s ambassador to the alliance told POLITICO.
“We would like to see [allies] fixing an irreversible path of Ukraine at NATO membership,” Nataliia Galibarenko said in an interview on Wednesday.
“We are not asking for something extraordinary,” she added.
Kyiv is racing to make its voice heard before the summit, worrying that the issue of its membership in the alliance will be shoved to the sidelines. It’s a subject that deeply divides NATO: Some countries like the U.S. and Germany are lukewarm over a rapid membership offer, while others — closer to the frontlines with Russia — want Ukraine’s future NATO status clearly spelled out.
Galibarenko reiterated that Kyiv is not looking for immediate accession to NATO, conceding that it’s problematic to admit a country at war with Russia that doesn’t control all of its territory. While waiting for full membership, however, Ukraine wants additional air defense and security commitments from both sides of the Atlantic.
Galibarenko spoke as dozens of foreign policy experts called on NATO to avoid advancing toward Ukrainian membership at the summit, warning it would endanger the U.S. and its allies and rupture the coalition.
The group of experts argued that letting Ukraine into NATO would mean triggering collective defense under the alliance’s Article 5 if Russia attacks Ukraine in the future. Galibarenko stressed that Kyiv is well aware of the concerns of NATO countries, which is why it is building its own alliance structure with bilateral pacts with allied countries.
“Since allies in NATO … don’t want to accept any political decision on inviting Ukraine until the war is over, we said, ‘OK, we do understand that,'” the ambassador said. “That is why we will be continuing with concluding bilateral security agreements.”
But Kyiv isn’t dropping the goal of joining.
“We made clear [at] different levels that the invitation will not just disappear from our agenda,” Galibarenko said.
The lingering fear among some NATO allies about escalating tensions with Moscow doesn’t go down well in Kyiv, more than two years after Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack on the country.
“This idea of not trying to escalate the situation more, for me, is very short-sighted,” Galibarenko said.
Words matter
Ukraine is pushing for NATO to firm up the language on its eventual membership — amid concerns that former U.S. President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November elections, could use NATO admission as a bargaining chip with Putin to end the war if he makes it back into the White House.
The alliance has been contorting itself for years, trying to figure out how to tell Ukraine it will be a member one day, without issuing an actual invitation.
Last year, at the Vilnius summit, NATO leaders agreed that “we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”
This time around, Galibarenko said, Kyiv is looking for language that is “a step forward from Vilnius.”
“We would like also to see that the alliance will recognize that we achieved a substantial progress in implementing reforms,” which is a precondition for joining NATO.
Top officials recently said a “bridge” into the alliance would be offered to Ukraine during the summit. Officials say NATO will also offer Ukraine a new headquarters to manage its military assistance — a gesture of good faith that the West will have the country’s back for the long term, even if it’s not afforded membership right now.
However, political uncertainty makes it difficult for the alliance to make a firm offer.
Trump’s team is reportedly drawing up plans to negotiate with Putin to end the war by forcing Ukraine to give up some of its territory — as well as its prospect of NATO membership.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has responded by calling on Trump to make any such plans public.
Galibarenko said she wouldn’t panic over such reports, and that she will judge what Trump does, not what he says, if he is reelected.
“We know that, sometimes, political leaders during the electoral campaign, they are saying certain things, and then after being elected, they do other things,” she said. “The notion to end the war in three days, I think it’s very unrealistic, because the war is already prolonging for two years … I don’t see any appetite from Putin for finishing this.”
Ukraine envoy to NATO: Firm up membership offer
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